


Seven Truths

by neverfaraway



Category: Rome
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 03:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3312368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the things Titus Pullo knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Truths

These are the things Titus Pullo knows.

One, he hates pigs. If he never sees another it’ll be too soon, for him and the beast, both. Where they came from remains a mystery – “from the forest, I expect,” says Aeneas, in that lofty way of his, as though he knows the arse end of a swine from the snout – but since they got into the kitchen garden, nothing has grown right. The winter peas are sprouting in summer, what he thought were pumpkin-vines have yielded melons, and Pullo has thrown away sestercii they can’t spare on cocks and wine to put it all to rights. Gallons of blood, he’s poured onto orange Umbrian clay, and it might as well be piss, begging Ceres' pardon, for all the good it’s done them.

Two, there is nothing, not one thing, he misses about the city. Not the stink of the river, not the chatter of the rabble in the street. In the country the sky is open and endlessly blue, rolling down, down, to the edge of the world and over the side like water. 

Three, one day Aeneas will get them all killed. The way Pullo sees it, either the boy’ll boast to one too many people about his divine mother, the goddess Isis, or he’ll decide to act upon the hot looks Vorena the Younger’s been flashing him over the porridge pot and Vorenus will renounce his peaceful ways and kill them all. There’s no point wailing about it; it’s just a question of which parent the boy takes after.

Four, when he dreams of his mother and remembers a time of happiness, he remembers something he never experienced, just a figment of his imagination, a dream invented in the darkness of the slave huts to keep himself warm at night. After her death, the only kinship he knew was that of the barracks. Now, there are five places at the dinner table, and Pullo finally understands what Vorenus means when he goes on to Aeneas about _family_ and _loyalty_ in an effort to make the boy speak to Pullo with even an appearance of respect. Somewhere out there, Augustus Caesar sits at the centre of a spider’s web, and on every spindle of that web there sits a man. A man with big ears and a bigger mouth, and a purse empty of coin. It is foolishness, Pullo knows that too, staying here, within arm's reach of Rome.

Five, when he thought he’d figured out what the poets meant when they talked about love, he was wrong. One day, the boys get to a passage in Lucretius that Lucius doesn’t understand, and Aeneas laughs at him for his youth and his innocence, even though the closest he’s ever been to a woman is the one that birthed him. Vorenus rolls his eyes and feigns disapproval and says, grumpy as a catfish, "Go and ask Pullo", and Lucius runs outside, clutching his tablet, shouting “Papa! Aeneas says this poem says something rude!”

Six, he doesn’t understand Vorenus at all. He slips into the cot by Vorenus’ side and enjoys the warm smell of him, the smooth heat of slipping his hands beneath Vorenus' tunic. “I’ll tell Lucius to stop,” he says. “It’s not right they call me Father.” 

Vorenus throws such a look over his shoulder and says gruffly, “It is right. Is it not?” 

And it’s the question, the uncertainty, as much as the sentiment that makes Pullo take him roughly by the shoulders and press ardent kisses against his mouth.

Seven, that there is more than one kind of happiness in the world, and that he, Titus Pullo, holds all of them carefully, like a bird, a jewel, a treasure, in the palm of his hand.


End file.
